Conversations I participated in
- @wolever said: Is there a word meaning "the object/person being impersonated"? Eg, if "he impersonated the king", then the "king was ???" [ 7:42 PM]
- @I said: @wolever Seems intransitive is for the "impersonate-ee": "The king was impersonated." Transitive subject is the impersonator. #linguistics [ 1:54 AM]
- @I said: @giynlith Lerts! Tell Uncle Glade!! #AchaeaMUD #youhadtobethere RT @irinarempt: This is why the world needs more lerts http://t.co/QUEkKVw [ 2:02 AM]
- @juliainfinland said: Looked into the #SPON forums + found that the ppl who believe "isolating languages are primitive" still exist. AND NOW THEY HAVE INTERNET. [ 6:07 AM]
- @I said: @juliainfinland Do tell, what is the One True Morphology if one's to be advanced, in that case? #linguistics #peopleontheinternerarewrong [ 9:15 AM]
4 comments:
Yup, Vietnamese sure is primitive, and English and Chinese are up to their necks in muck side by side.
Oh you know it. Look at this English here -- each word only carries one measly meaning! Well, I suppose the verbs carry two, but that's still pretty weak. What's the world coming to??
;)
Oh, I don't know. Consider how many things hard means: hart, schwierig, fleißig, schwer, mühsam, heftig, stark, streng, alkoholisch, gut, scharf, kräftig, anstrengend, usw. Then there's in fact, which can mean any of in effeti, di fatto, infatti, in realtà, anzi, però, tant'è vero che, per esempio, a dire, il vero, ecc. [Examples due to Douglas Hofstadter.] English is just too vague to be intelligible, and the lack of morphology only makes it worse.
I know! Let's invent a language with no ambiguity whatsoever. Should be a snap. That will solve everything. Probably bring about World Peace, even. ;)
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